…Nauru does billion-dollar laundry?

What does a billion-dollar bank look like?

If you said a shack on a small island in the Pacific Ocean, you would unfortunately be correct.

This shack, located on the eight square miles of the island nation of Nauru (a tiny island of 13,500 people located 1,200 miles east of New Guinea) has seen billions of dollars flushed through its system recently, as those that are working with less than legal tender are looking to the island for its money laundering services.

It wasn’t always this way though, as Nauru used to be a prosperous phosphate mine, until the bird dropping based wealth was sucked form the land, leaving little more than a crater and a distant memory of prosperous times.

Recently, Jack Hitt of The New York Times had a chance to tour this highly unlikely bank, and his resulting report is a great read about a country that can’t find its way, and the things that they do to survive.